So what do Virginia Woolf and a stand-up comedy act have in common? Answer below.I have two modes of stand-up - standing up talking, or sitting behind a piano singing. So this evening is a bit different. I am the resident pianist at a new London comedy club. I do the on-music and the off-music for each act, I accompany any act who feels like singing a song, and I interrupt the compere in a mock-annoying way. I am basically the funny little guy trying to be Letterman, but with a piano instead of a whole funk band.

None of the acts want to sing a song. Unsurprising, really - it has been rather thrust upon them. It was always something of a long shot that one of the acts might be suddenly bored of telling jokes, and decide that the best way to round off their routine is a rendition of My Heart Belongs to Daddy. Well, not on the first night, anyway.

I can think of a few gigs where I'd have been glad of an accompanist. Like those ill-conceived gigs that have broken the golden rule (that every comedy show, like Virginia Woolf, needs a room of its own: you either use a function room, or you charge on the door), and where the people in the pub for pubbing purposes outnumber the comedy-goers perhaps 10 to one. The background hum becomes a background roar, and the noise of your jokes is likewise quite a small proportion of the total room noise. It's like running a gig inside a threshing machine, or on the deck of an aircraft carrier.

On one such occasion, having run through a couple of my routines (seemingly for my own amusement), I saw I had about three minutes left of my contracted set length. Anyone enjoying this travesty of a comedy gig will be mainly enjoying the absurdity of the whole experience, rather than any of the actual jokes. So, to indulge the futility, I fill the last three minutes with my own rendition of New York, New York. When my allotted time span elapsed, I left the stage, mid-word.

Tonight's gig is properly run, so no such rescue would be necessary. As no act wants to indulge their instincts as an all-round family entertainer, my role is limited to two elements. One - I am going to do a set myself. This will involve the audience cricking their necks round away from the stage and towards piano corner. The exercise will do them good.

And two - the compere and I will improvise a kind of buddy double-act. We've not worked together before, so it's a bit of a long shot. He would be saying something, and then I would interrupt with the piano, and then he would act annoyed at my interruption. Unfortunately, he's a good enough actor that I couldn't entirely put from my mind the idea that he was genuinely annoyed. It's easier for my contributions to be self-consciously unreal, as most of my gambits are done through a piano. But from him, the word-based half of the double-act, it was too easy to believe - even just momentarily - that he meant it.

But we managed a few nice ideas. He was talking about how it might be useful to have your own personal piano player in the background at difficult moments in life. He then went into a scene where he tells his mum he's got his girlfriend pregnant and, at the critical moment, I broke into the chirpy theme tune to Mr Benn.

So, if you have some difficult news to impart to a family member (and that family member can be regularly found in a room that boasts a vibraphone) I am available for hire. Contact me through the usual channels.